Amazon No. 2 on LinkedIn’s Top Companies list — see where else ‘the world wants to work now’

Amazon’s Day 1 tower on the company’s corporate campus just north of downtown Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

The biggest names in tech are also the best places to work according to LinkedIn’s Top Companies 2017 list, which was revealed on Thursday.

Don’t tell your boss, but the 50 companies spanning 21 industries and employing 3.3 million workers across the U.S. are apparently where professionals want to work — now! — LinkedIn Editor in Chief Daniel Roth said in a blog post.

The list is based on the billions of actions taken by LinkedIn’s more than 500 million members, Roth wrote. The three main pillars in those actions? Interest in a company’s jobs, interest in a company’s brand and employees, and employee retention.

Alphabet — which some people probably still Google to find out that it used to be Google — tops the list with its “legendary culture” and the opportunity and resources to “tackle massive problems.”

Seattle-based e-commerce and everything-else giant Amazon ranks No. 2 on the list and 341,400 employees (and growing) can’t be wrong, can they? LinkedIn touts the company as an Oscar winner and Prime provider that loves its dogs. Amazon put out a news release to share the good news.

“I believe the biggest reason that the best talent in the world wants to work and stay at Amazon is our unique culture of innovation and customer obsession,” said Beth Galetti, SVP of human resources at Amazon. “Thank you to our hundreds of thousands of employees who bring this culture to life and make sure every day at Amazon is Day 1.”

Facebook, Salesforce and Uber rounded out the top five.

This inverted topography of Mount Rainier greets people at the entrance of Tableau’s new Seattle headquarters. (GeekWire Photo / Nat Levy)

Seattle’s Tableau Software made the cut at No. 30, with a nod toward the company’s obsessive culture around data visualization. “Not only do its employees host an annual data conference, they also produce ongoing “Iron Viz” competitions — like Iron Chef with less fire and more data visualizations,” LinkedIn said.

Retailers Starbucks (46) and Nordstrom (50) completed Seattle’s representation. The coffee giant, much like Amazon, set a goal for hiring military veterans and hit that goal a year early when it hired 10,000 veterans and military spouses. It’s been expanded to 25,000 by 2025.

On a list nearly topped by Amazon, Nordstrom hangs on to represent traditional retail in some regard. LinkedIn calls attention to the company’s e-commerce site accounting for roughly 25 percent of revenue, and the fact that the new chief information officer is a 34-year veteran of the company.

It’s worth noting that LinkedIn itself and Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, which completed a $2.6 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in December, are both absent from the list on purpose, according to the methodology, which you can here.

Writer and editor Kurt Schlosser covers the Geek Life beat for GeekWire. A longtime journalist, photographer and designer, he has worked previously for NBC News, msnbc.com and the Seattle P-I. Follow Kurt on Twitter or reach him at kurt@geekwire.com.